Handbook for tHe Inter-amerIcan network on Government Procurement
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be awarded on price, quality and environmental performance. In
chile, public purchasing has to bring whole-life value for the
public purse and in Peru the new procure ment law embeds the
value-for-money principle.
many procurement laws also provide explicit space for using
performance-based or functional speciications. this enables procur-
ers to make environmental and social performance an integrated
part of the ‘performance’ or the ‘functionality’ that is being pur-
chased. Procurers then have the mandate to award higher scores to
environmental and social perfor- mance when evaluating bids.
4. SettIng gOALS
the global experience on SPP dem- onstrates two broad approaches to
establishing SPP goals:
• Establish an SPP target. This will require that a given share or per-
centage of public procurement would need to integrate sustain-
ability performance. for example, belgium has established a 50
target on GPP and implementa- tion is prioritized on the following
products: transport, food and catering, green electricity, sustain-
able wood and buildings and toxic products.
• Establish the areas of spend that need to integrate environmental
and social performance. for ex- ample, in the uSa, 95 of federal
purchasing contracts must refer to products that are energy-eicient,
water eicient, bio-based, environ- mentally preferable, non-ozone
depleting, made with recovered materials, and that encourage
lower carbon footprints.
5. InfOrMIng SuPPLIerS And the wIder
MArket
once the decisions to implement SPP are made, policymakers and
political leaders need to announce this intent to the domestic economy.
this will provide critical lead-time for suppliers to upgrade their
sustainability performance and for public procurers to increase their
expertise in integrating the same in tender decisions. therefore, when
tenders are launched in subsequent months, many more suppliers will be
ready to bid and the bidding price can be substantially lower, perhaps
even comparable to the purchasing costs of lesser-sustainable alterna-
tives.
6. PrIOrItIzIng where tO StArt
Prioritizing where to start the imple- mentation of SPP is always subject
to much discussion and debate.
Many jurisdictions prefer to take an incremental or a staged approach,
beginning with a shortlist of prod- ucts and services and, over time,
increasing its scope.
It is, however, very important that procurers prioritize the right
products and services to kick-start implementation. commentators and
stakeholders will be paying partic- ular attention to the preliminary
phase of SPP and those leading the SPP efort will be under due
pressure to demonstrate theory in practice. to this end, it is best to
select the ‘pilot’ products and services based on the following
considerations:
- which products and services have the largest environmental
and social footprint? If early eforts on SPP can be associa-
ted with tangible beneits in terms of better air quality,
reduced waste, creation of greener jobs and indeed low-
ered operational expenditure, the credibility of the imped-
ing SPP efort will be greatly enhanced.
- what is the share that public procurement represents in the
overall demand for a given product or service? the larger
this share, the more SPP will serve as an incentive for green
industrial competiveness and the greater the inluence it can
have on the behaviour of suppli- ers in the market.
- what is the purchasing cost of sustainable goods and services?
are these goods and services, easier and cheaper to use, main-
tain and dispose of? do they increase productivity?
- what products and services can be sourced from and are
manufactured in the domestic economy? can SPP trigger the
adoption of cleaner production, resource eiciency and im-
proved health and safety? can public demand help augment
green industrial and knowledge economy skills across supply
chains? can SPP help increase domestic green industrial com-
petitiveness?
- what are the priority sectors or target sectors for foreign direct
investment fdI? do these sectors align with the goods,
services and infrastructure that the public sector seeks to pro-
cure? If they do, SPP can serve as a complimentary strategy for
increasing fdI and industrial development.
